OK, we don't trust you again. By "you," I mean Hartford Mayor Pedro Segarra and the city council majority leaders who met during Monday night's storm to pass a law creating the Hartford Stadium Authority.

Last June, Segarra and other city leaders emerged from top secret meetings with the New Britain Rock Cats to announce a "done deal" for the city to build the team a new stadium. It wasn't a done deal. It was a dumb deal, so dumb that five weeks later, Segarra pulled it off the table and announced that he'd be back with a whole new scheme in which a private developer would build the stadium and lease it to the city which would then ... Actually, it doesn't matter, because that one's dead too.

If asked to summarize the basic message sent by the people of Hartford over the last seven months, I would say: "Don't make promises without talking to us first. Let us know what you're planning to do, just in case it's really stupid. OK?"

So what did they do? On Monday, as the storm struck, the governor and the mayor declared states of emergency. The city issued a parking ban, and the police asked people to stay off the roads.

Then, the city council met and passed an ordinance "establishing the Hartford Stadium Authority for the purpose of owning the property on which the Minor League Baseball Stadium will be located, issuance of revenue bonds for construction of the stadium, management of stadium construction and lease of the stadium to the City of Hartford which will sublease it to the baseball team. And yes, we know we already announced two other plans, which we said were definitely the best way to do it, but this time we're really, really sure we've got it right, which is why we thought it would be better to do it with nobody around, because when people are around you just start yelling at us, and we get so upset!"

The Hartford Stadium Authority appears to be a quasi-public agency. The term "quasi" is Latin for "as if." Example:

The Plain People of Connecticut: "You people over there at the Capitol Region Development of Steamship, Turnpike and Water Resources Recovery Authority (CRDSTWRRA) are public employees so you better tell us what you're up to!"

CRDSTWRRA: "As if!"

A quasi-public agency is what you form when what you want to do isn't a good enough idea so that it could work as pure private enterprise but is also the kind of thing you don't want to have to keep asking the voters about. The new "authority" will have either five or seven members. Some will be public officials. Some won't. And slowly, you can feel civic control slipping away.

It's almost never a good idea. In 2000, the administration of Gov. John Rowland and a quasi-public agency called the New London Development Corp. tried to ram through a huge commercial and residential project called Fort Trumbull. Once again, it wasn't a good enough idea to work as pure capitalism. One of the many crutches was the taking of private homes by the government, which turned into the infamous Kelo case.

The Fort Trumbull project limped along as the Sick Man of Southern Connecticut. It was never built. The current mayor of New London ran on a promise to disband the quasi-public agency. That proved hard to do. So far he has only succeeded in giving it a hilarious new name, the Renaissance City Development Authority.

Last year, we also celebrated the 15th anniversary of the bungled attempt to bring the New England Patriots to Hartford, a deal that would have made wealthy owner Robert Kraft about $650 million richer while obliging the plain people, their backs bent with the effort of paying for it all, to hope that things would, you know, work out OK.

That one involved a quasi-public agency called the Capital City Economic Development Authority. After the Patriots debacle, this newspaper's editorial page complained, in 1999, "CCEDA's penchant for operating in secrecy is another problem."

The Patriots have moved on. They're playing in the Super Bowl. And Hartford? We learned our lesson, right?

As if!

Colin McEnroe appears from 1 to 2 p.m. weekdays on WNPR-FM (90.5) and blogs at courantblogs.com/colin-mcenroe. He can be reached at Colin@wnpr.org.